WikiLeaks documents link China to Google attack

WikiLeaks is causing quite an international uproar with the release of more than 250,000 confidential documents containing communications from U.S. embassies across the globe. The documents reveal the nation’s policy and views on all sorts of foreign incidents. Among them, one set of documents has caught the attention of tech media around the web, as it allegedly confirms what many assumed all along: the Chinese government was directly responsible for the hacking attempts on Google earlier this year targeting the Gmail accounts of Chinese human right activists.

According to the New York Times, a Chinese contact reportedly told the American Embassy in Beijing in January 2010 that the incidents were part of a ''coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government.'' A senior Politburo official supposedly prompted the attacks after he searched his own name on Google and found various articles criticizing him.

The documents suggest the Chinese government has also broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002. So far, there has been no official reaction from either the U.S. or Chinese government to this specific story. However, given that the documents apparently only refer to an embassy “contact” and not to any hard evidence, it will likely remain the same way.

Google temporarily pulled out of China earlier this year and began serving uncensored results through its Hong Kong servers. However, with its operating license set to expire in July, Google opted for a last minute compromise and agreed to comply with Chinese regulation again but offering a link on google.cn to the unfiltered Hong Kong site.